An Italian freelance photographer won the top prize in the World Press
Photo competition Friday with an image of a woman shouting her protest
at the results of the Iranian presidential election from a Tehran
rooftop at dusk.

The photo was shown by Italian RAI television and published in Loop magazine.

Jury chair Ayperi Karabuda Ecer said: "The photo shows the beginning of something, the beginning of a huge story. It adds perspectives to news. It touches you both visually and emotionally, and my heart went out to it immediately."

Fellow juror Guy Tillim commented: "The difficulty in photographing conflict situations is one of portraying the parallel lives involved, of people going on with their lives. This picture has made a very good attempt at marrying these two elements, in giving the conflict a context - and that is a holy grail of photography. The photographer does it with a very beautiful image of an Iranian landscape, which would be worth looking at in itself. But it also arouses our curiosity about the woman shouting - incorporating this moment, the importance of this historical event. It represents a very honest and successful attempt at taking forward our vocabulary of showing things."

Juror Kate Edwards said: "The photo has a powerful sense of atmosphere, tension, fear - but also of quietness and calm, and in this sense was a challenge as a choice. We were looking for an image that drew you in, took you deeper, made you think more - not just about showing what we already know, but something that asks more of us."